Be Greedy When Others Are Fearful

- WB

Have you spent a good portion of this week fretting that investment markets were imploding and your hard-earned returns were evaporating?

If you have, then you would be forgiven, but I want to tell you, there should be no sleep lost in times like this; there should only be excitement.

Mainstream and social media headlines favor hype and hysteria; they trumpet the next new-new things or the old things come new again. The sensible, discernible, and generally “less looked at” segments in the middle of markets simply do not grab enough attention for trumpeting. As a result, they get overlooked, and are a great place to look for returns.

Unfortunately, during hype phases, liquidity (generally leveraged) floods into the loudest corners of the market, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of price rises and further attention. These become the assets that rally harder and harder and dominate headlines, but they are also the ones that correct aggressively when reality calls.

A WILD WEEK

This week, we have seen exactly that across the assets du jour: Gold, Silver, Crypto, and Tech stocks. In recent months, these assets have found each other’s company, sailing together on the good ship “Positively Correlated.”

The last 5 days in % - Hysteria

Source: Bloomberg Finance L.P., 5 Feb 2026. Past performance is not an indicator of future performance. This does not constitute investment advice; it is for informational and educational purposes.

But hysteria can’t exist without hype. It is worth viewing these falls in the context of their performance since the 2025 “Liberation Day” tariff lows.

Same assets since Liberation Day lows to last week’s peaks vs last 5 days

Source: Bloomberg Finance L.P., 5 Feb 2026. Past performance is not an indicator of future performance. This does not constitute investment advice; it is for informational and educational purposes.

Bitcoin is the only asset that made a round trip, but if you only captured half the average here, you should still be very happy. That is, however, rarely how it works; weighted by the timing of investor entries, people usually lose money as they tend to come in towards the peak of these rallies. The question is: are we seeing a reversion to the mean, or a permanent market re-rating in these assets?

That is a question I can’t answer, but thankfully, it’s not one I have to.

PORTFOLIO CONSTRUCTION

If your global equity exposure is constructed correctly, you can sleep soundly during events like this. You don’t need to “hug the tape.” If you step away from the headlines and remember that chasing 100% annual returns is often fool’s gold, you can find slower but safer ideas in other places. Like finding a quiet local alley in a bustling tourist town. This approach can offer great opportunities with significantly less risk.

THE ROAD NOT TAKEN

Looking at the last five days through a different lens, we see segments of the market that are out of the headlines and unloved, yet trading at valuations that look a far sight healthier.

The Others - Between Hype and Hysteria

Source: Bloomberg Finance L.P., 5 Feb 2026. Past performance is not an indicator of future performance. This does not constitute investment advice; it is for informational and educational purposes.

Now, this is interesting. Here we have a selection of assets that are less en vogue but are still standard DM exposures. They are trading in a way that isn’t headline-worthy, but equally wouldn’t disturb your sleep when headlines get unnerving. When we look at their returns post-Liberation Day to last week, we saw an average return of c.30%. That is very healthy for 10 or so months of performance, and one I will take any day of the week for the risk trade off.

THE EXCITED INVESTOR

If you consider yourself an investor, moments like this should excite you. They excite me. There are names I am invested in that have been caught up in the hysteria, but their fundamentals are more than sound; they are downright attractive.

There is one tech name I own, in the US - which I can’t mention due to regulations - that has fallen c.50% in the last few months but most in the last week. It has returned close to its 2022 price. Cause for worry? But wait:

• Revenues are up 60% since 2022.

• Swung from a 10% (of revenues) loss when I bought it to a 30% profit today, and expected to continue growing

• FCF / EV is coming in at c.9x next year

• Cash on hand is 20% of the market cap and 10x the debt.

• Growth is estimated in the high teens for the next couple of years, and they are only now creating cost efficiencies with AI.

It has skirted interest as headlines have implied underwhelming performance compared to hopes, but it is a robust operator with top-class capital management and allocation, and overall, a wonderful risk-return profile.

Gems like this exist if you know where to look and what you’re looking at, and having a long-term, sensible approach makes weeks like this a time to get greedy, and if you do lose any sleep, it will be from excitement at the day ahead.